Not a Kid Anymore
by xenzen
Summary: Created for Dueling Challenge #21, "Action!": Jedi on one side, men old enough to be her father on the other, what's a bored teenager got to do around here to get some respect?


"Mission? Mission, I know you're there."

Frak, the geezer'd caught on a lot faster than she'd thought. Mission did her best to ignore the old man's voice as she hung upside down in the narrow vent shaft, fingers busy with the explosive charge.

"Answer me, Mission. The comm says you're receiving, so stop pretending you can't hear me."

_Blah, blah, blah_, Mission mouthed, mimicking the other old man. Carth could yammer at her all day, she didn't have to answer if she didn't want to, so there. If she hadn't _promised_ to, she would've left her comm off. Besides, she was - _hah_ - on a mission, and Carth was interfering with her duty. Or something.

Although she had to admit, she would've mucked out a thousand bantha stalls if it meant getting off the ship for just a second. With everyone cooped up in there, it hadn't taken long for her to start climbing up the walls. Now she could climb walls for real, and all she had to do was make trouble.

She was _good_ at that.

Her fingers pressed the tiny buttons, arming the charge.

"Dammit, Mission, answer me!"

Mission ignored him, until she heard him mutter, "Just like a kid to run off without saying anything."

"I'm _not_ a kid!" Mission snapped, and cut herself off when her voice echoed down the shaft. In the sudden silence that followed, Mission thought she heard leathery wings snapping and claws ticking on stone. The smell of shyrack guano was pretty strong here. Mission wrinkled her nose when a draft blew the stench up.

It's not much worse than the Undercity, she told herself. _I guess._ She unknotted her lekku from around her neck. Again.

It was time to move on, a little faster than she expected, thanks to paranoid, interfering old geezers who didn't know when to shut up.

"Got you with that one, didn't I?"

"Shut the frak up, geezer," Mission huffed as she pulled herself back up the narrow stone shaft.

Dim light filtered down, dust motes dancing and falling down into utter darkness. She could feel the age of this place like a gravity well, pulling her down. It was creeping her out. This place was older than Canderous. Older than Jolee, even, and Jolee was a fossil dug up from, like, the dawn of time or something.

"Watch your language, missy." Mission rolled her eyes, but saved her breath for climbing. "Where the hell are you, anyway?"

"I don't have to tell you," Mission muttered. Her hands made quick work of pulling herself to the top, helped along by the repulsorlift generator attached to her belt. She blinked in the dying red light of the setting sun when she emerged.

Two down, two to go. Some rocks fell down as she heaved herself to her feet, taking a long time to clatter to the bottom. More slithering noises made her hurry across the mesa to her next target. Shyracks didn't like the light, did they? Or blue Twi'leks?

_I'm so not tasty, shyracks. I'm probably poisonous or something. Yeah._

She wished Carth could be offered as the sacrifice instead, when he just wouldn't _shut up_. Too bad that orange jacket of his would show up here like an aristo slumming in the Undercity. Probably why he'd been cooped up with her, the droids, Big Z, Bastila, and the grumpy old Mandalorian on the ship.

"You know Zaalbar's been tearing up the place looking for you?"

Mission felt a twinge of guilt hearing that, but there was no way the big hairy furball could fit in the shafts like she could, so she hadn't told him. Big Z would've insisted on coming.

"He's not taking it well, huh?"

"I managed to talk him out of turning the Drunk Side inside out, but it was pretty close."

She winced; she'd seen a lot of bars in her time, and had lifted a fair share of credit pouches from passed-out marks, but the ones in the Drunk Side were hard-eyed, tough bastards. Big Z wouldn't last five seconds in there without her.

But, frak it, she couldn't let the old geezer know he'd hit a nerve.

"I can take care of myself. I don't need no Wookiee babysitting me. Or old geezers, neither."

It seemed like she'd been saying that a lot lately. Well, she could, couldn't she?

Here she was, doing something important, doing something only she could do. Her Majesty the Supreme High Overlord Princess Bastila Shan wouldn't be able to turn her nose up at Mission like she smelled bad.

Mission firmed her jaw and crawled over the dark stone to the next tomb.

_I'm not a kid. Kids wouldn't be able to do this -_

The stone crumbled underneath her, and gravity ripped her grip from the gritty surface. Her frantic scrabbling for a handhold, any handhold, had her sliding down for a small, heartstopping eternity, until she hit something that knocked all the breath from her body and rattled her bones. A tinny voice crying _Mission!_ fell into the abyss. She curled up, groaning, her lekku choking her throat until she forcibly loosened them.

It was some time before her thoughts regained any coherence.

_Okay, okay, don't panic. You didn't panic when you were alone with the rakghouls in the sewers after the Gamorreans got Big Z, right?_

Breathe. Breathe. Breathe.

_Open your eyes, look around, pay attention. Find the marks, pick one, start making them give you credits._

Mission opened her watering eyes and blinked. It was darker than the inside of Brejik's stony heart here, or nearly so. Her eyes adjusted slowly, the stars clearing from her vision to see the inside of another shaft. A tiny dot of light shone down on her.

It was just strong enough for her to see the giant, sharp spikes protruding up from the bottom. Bleached skulls and bones glowed, and here and there, broken ribcages were perched on the tips of the lethal stalagmites. She'd landed just above them, on the side; her sliding fall had dropped her on a narrow ledge.

Mission tore her eyes away and uncurled herself. At least none of the poor suckers were freshly dead.

Okay, everything still attached, nothing broken. She smoothed back her lekku, which were trying to knot themselves around her neck again.

_Okay, first things first. Check your gear._

Her blasters were still in their holsters, and her harness was intact. The precious satchel of explosives was still there, and since she wasn't a smear on the walls, were still in working order. To her dismay, the repulsorlift generator had been crushed by her landing. The communicator was gone, too, lost somewhere in the bones.

Mission brushed the tears of frustration and terror from her eyes, and breathed in the stale air. _You didn't have any fancy repulsorlift when you were in the Undercity. So you gotta do a little more work, right? You're not gonna wait like some little kid for someone to come along and rescue you, right?_

Mission got to her feet and took off her gloves. Her bare fingers encountered seams in the rough stone, barely enough for her to get a grip on it... but just enough.

With reluctance, Mission divested herself of everything that would weigh her down, including her boots, and bundled everything into the satchel. She attached a line to it from her harness; she could pull it up after her if - when - she reached the top.

Mission peered up at the hole, which was visibly darkening. _You're wasting time._ She ran her hands across the seams, found a handhold, and started climbing.

Sweat ran into her eyes, her shoulders, fingers, legs and toes ached, and every second she could feel the yawning nothingness beneath her. Her lekku were flattened and wrapped around her neck, and she couldn't pull them off. The skin on her hands and feet felt raw, and the smell of corruption below made her gag in between laboring, panting breaths for air.

And still the hole seemed no closer than before.

She fell into a rhythm. _One, two, three, four..._ Mission counted the handholds she'd found, used, passed. _One hundred and seventy..._ One tired hand missed a grab, and she nearly slipped. Lost her place.

_Start over. One, two, three..._

While the tips were rubbed raw, she couldn't feel her fingers anymore. Or her shoulders. They were beyond pain, now.

Time stretched and dilated into a pain-filled, numb eternity.

There were no thoughts in her head now, just a dogged, wordless determination to pull one foot over the other, hand over hand.

Mission shrieked when something warm wrapped around her wrist and pulled her up. Instinctively, she kicked out, trying to get away, adrenaline-driven panic lending her exhausted body strength.

"Mission! Calm down, it's me!"

Never had she been so glad to hear the old geezer's voice. To her exhausted, bemused surprise, she was enfolded into a hard, leather-scented hug. She was too tired and relieved to protest.

_And I don't remember the last time someone hugged me because they were glad to see me._ Big Z wasn't very expressive unless he was angry, or hungry.

A question floated up out of the haze. "How'd you find me?" she mumbled.

"Your comm has a tracker. All I had to do was keep you talking."

Mission didn't need to see the smirk on the geezer's face. She was too tired to smack it off him. Besides, her hands hurt. Her arms hurt. Everything hurt, really.

"Pretty clever," she said. "For a geezer."

"You're a mess, Mission. We should get back to the ship, anyway. The others could come back from the academy any second."

For a second, Mission almost let him persuade her. Let someone else do this, she was too tired. Let the grown-ups do it, it's _their_ job.

_But I'm not a kid anymore._

"No," Mission said, turning around to pull the satchel up. "Not yet, old man. I've still got a job to do. I'm not a kid anymore."


End file.
